Heartbroken
by Ocean's Tale
Summary: Deep in Radiant Garden, one member of the Organization regains his heart. Isa's heart remembers one thing while his mind remembers another.  Oneshot, MASSIVE spoiler alert for the novels


Afternoon had settled thick and humid over Radiant Garden, stifling everyone with muggy weather to the point that not even the Heartless wanted to venture out in search of hearts to claim for their own. Despite the weather and the reluctance of the Heartless, one lone Keyblade Bearer relentlessly attacked any of the shadowy creatures that dared the humid afternoon. The fall of the Organization didn't mean he could slack off on his training, as he had found that there was always a more dangerous foe lurking just out of sight.

A Guardian Heartless appeared in a swirl of darkness, only to be mercilessly attacked by the Keyblade Bearer. It didn't take long at all for the Heartless to be defeated, its heart spinning up into the sky, preceding the slight spiral of darkness that accompanied the death of a Heartless. Usually, the heart held by any given Heartless vanished shortly after defeat. But not this time. Not this heart.

It drifted on an invisible wind, down, down past the rooftops and into a sheltered dead end. As it neared the ground, the heart almost appeared to fade. The wisps of fading heart touched the cobblestones and, miraculously, gave form to a person lying prone on the road.

A cloak black as darkness itself pooled on the stones, blue hair fanned out underneath the body and fell over his shoulders, pointed ears just barely visible. Two, pale pink, crisscrossing scars on his face told of an old, long-since healed injury. The last wisps of the heart vanished, and all was still in the dead end, silent save for the faded, distant sounds of the Keyblade Bearer.

Then, slowly, Saix' golden eyes blinked open.

No, not Saix. His form was too vulnerable, his expression to lost and confused to be the vicious, emotionless Lunar Diviner.

Isa.

Isa laid prone for only a moment, and in that brief moment something of Saix that remained shown through. But that memory of a memory vanished as quickly as it had appeared, for Isa bolted upright in realization of what he had suddenly felt. His hands flew to his chest, pressing against the thick black cloth, searching for confirmation of what he thought couldn't possibly be true. But there it was, right beneath the palm of his left hand; The steady thump of a beating heart. He was whole again.

Shaking with a cocktail of emotions, Isa grasped the zipper at the nape of his neck and fought to remove the coat that suddenly felt too tight, too restricting. How had he been able to stand wearing these coats for so long? Come to think of it, just how long had he worn the coat? He couldn't remember, his mind was so foggy...

Finally he gave up with trying to undo the zipper with trembling fingers and simply pulled the coat over his head, breathing hard. Isa didn't even glance at the dark fabric before he flung it aside with all his might. He couldn't get that coat away from his person fast enough. The coat landed heavily one the cobblestones a couple feet away from him. He should have been able to throw it farther away, but that didn't matter now.

Isa rested on elbow on his knee, raising a hand and pressing it to his temple, only then to realize that he was drenched in a cold sweat. He was forgetting something. Something deathly important. _Why_ couldn't he remem-

An image flooded his mind, summoned from his heart as Isa tried to figure out what was going on. A fiery redhead with spiky hair fighting at his side against an endless wave of dark creatures with glowing eyes. The last thing his heart remembered before the darkness had overwhelmed them.

Before he could fully process the memory, he jumped and looked sharply to the side with a cry. "_**Lea!**_"

The cold, unyielding stone and silent houses around Isa offered no returning cry, no reassurance that his friend was nearby or even alive. But he had returned, regained his heart! Surely Lea, who had always been the more emotional of the two, had managed that!

It wasn't his heart that kicked into gear and recalled what it could remember this time, but rather his mind. Bidden by Isa's thoughts for his friend, his mind presented the last time he could remember seeing him. A man stood in front of him, flamelets dancing about his person and drifting up from his hands as two weapons vanished. A look of pain and shock on his face, and the business end of his Claymore too far into his chest to be anything but fatal.

Isa visibly shook, golden eyes wide with terror as he stared unseeing at his hands. Had... he had _stabbed_ Axel. No, not stabbed. _Murdered_. Murdered his own best friend, Nobody or not. He didn't remember the reasoning behind it, and didn't care to remember. There wasn't any reasoning in the world to justify murdering his best friend. And the that fact that he did so made him so disgusted with himself he could hardly stand it. Tears streaked down his cheeks as he buried his face in his hands, peering between his fingers as his body trembled with fear, confusion and repulsion.

Isa curled in on himself on the cobblestones and sobbed as his own memories broke his heart.


End file.
